Note 5 — Chapter IV · THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES

The comparatively trifling value of the Saar coal, when one thinks of the violence done to the sentiments of over half a million people, was first brought to my attention by a group of Alsatians, all of them thoroughly loyal to France, but who were opposed to the Saar clauses of the treaty. They told me in December, 1918, that the propaganda for separating the Saar from Germany was ill advised, both from the political and economic points of view. Politically, they were afraid of the reunited provinces being swamped with more Germans, who could easily cross the frontier from the Saar valley. Economically, they declared that the coal was of little value and that the clamor for the Saar mines was simply a prelude to the annexation of the Rhine provinces by France, to which all Alsatians were opposed. What they told me is borne out by an article in “The New York Times,” March 25, 1923, in which a consulting engineer, Mr. Walter Graham, says: “The Saar coal basin is almost useless; for the coal makes a very inferior coke and the mines are deep and gaseous, the veins thin, and the coal impure.”